The Washington University School of Medicine is committed to developing and maintaining a high quality animal care and use program. To this end, the school has undertaken a major reorganization of the institution's animal care program with the creation of the new position of Assistant Vice Chancellor for Veterinary Affairs and the new Division of Comparative Medicine (DCM). A critical component of the reorganization is the plan to administratively centralize animal care in all medical school facilities under DCM by July of 1991. Significant progress has been made to date, with 60% of the animal facility space currently being managed by DCM, and there is every reason to expect that this goal will be reached. The specific aims of the three projects detailed in this roposal are: 1) to establish a resource for animal surgery to ensure that all-survival surgical procedures on nonrodent mammals are performed in surgical facilities complying with Guide standards; 2) to develop a rodent barrier and, quarantine facility to meet the rapidly expanding need for maintaining animals free of adventitious viruses and primary pathogens; and 3) to develop a resource for receiving and distributing animals to the 23 animal facilities currently on the medical campus - this would help implement the plan to centralize purchasing and receiving of all animals at the medical school. The improvements detailed in this proposal would provide essential resources for complying with Guide standards, significantly enhance research productivity, and facilitate the transition to centralized management of animal care. These resource improvements represent a major step toward the ultimate goal of providing exemplary programs and physical resources for the care and use of research animals that not only meet but exeed minimal standards, therby enhancing biomedical research at the institution. All of the space planned for A&R and all equipment involved with this proposal will be directly managed by the Division of Comparative Medicine (DCH) as a common resource available to the entire medical school faculty.